Values: Reduction, Supervenience, and Explanation by Ascent

Abstract

Abstract I doubt that there is one metaphysical status for values. To take just ethics, the status of prudential values is different, I suspect, from that of most moral values, and moral values are not uniform among themselves. For that reason, we should, at the start, choose one sort of value to concentrate on. I shall choose prudential values. I use ‘prudence’ in the philosopher's broad sense, in which it has to do with everything that makes an individual life, seen on its own, good. I concentrate on the prudential case for two reasons. First, it seems to me a bit easier than the moral one, while raising all the central meta-ethical questions. It is easier, I think, even though it is impossible to make a sharp cut between prudence and morals. And secondly, human interests hold a particularly basic place among values generally. They get us into the subject not only more easily but also at a deeper point. Also, I do not myself find it fruitful to separate meta-ethics and normative ethics for long. I think that their best hope for advance is to advance together. It is hard to decide on the reducibility, or supervenience, or reality of values without a fairly full idea of what is valuable and what arguments are actually available to us in deciding this. So my way into this meta-ethical subject is through some normative ethics.